Actually, Amos, Word contains capabilities to do virtually everything that FrameMaker or Quark Xpress can do, so far as the professional print shops are concerned, with the additional consideration that the "document" is much more easily ported to other aps. Once it's in one of the other "layout programs" it's rather more difficult to bring it back to a different use.

The choice between Word and another pro-level layout program was largely just a matter of whether your print shop had the one you'd like to use, since layout is usually a last step before going to print. It always required some effort for users to find all the features in Word, but nobody with half a brain would tell you that it's easy to be a master layout operator with any of the others either. Very few of the few features (there are some) the high dollar programs have that are missing in Word are actually needed except in a few specialized niches, although some features get used "for convenience" where they're not really much help to the printers.

The problem now is that even though (most of) the features are still in Word, they're concealed so that it's nearly impossible even for capable users to get to them.

It would appear that Microsoft needs to return to a "pro version" for Office, especially for Word and Excel, and admit that what they're pushing for the rabble is a toy version for twats (people who use twitter) intendended for tweeting and twitting and not much else.

The PDF format is a good one, but Reader, and Acrobat (which has had eleven different names in versions we've bought for professional use) are NOT ADEQUATELY SUPPORTED. Response to known vulnerabilities has been months behind the need, and patches frequently have needed patches for the errors in the patches. Flash is possibly even worse (although maybe better than when Macromedia owned it). I don't - and WON'T - have Adobe Reader on my computer, much less Adobe Acrobat - because I found something better (and lots of bucks cheaper).

Some Microsoft publicity releases have alluded to replacements for both Flash and PDF, and there's some support for the idea among the tech commentators. Although it's probably premature to predict which way it will go, it's quite reasonable to expect that both may disappear - at least in most usages - fairly soon.

John